ABSTRACT
Neurological and somatic injuries create sensorimotor disorders that interfere with safety, quality of life, employment, household tasks, and mobility. This chapter offers an overview of many sensory and motor functions and their organization in body schemata. Consequent motion disorders should be accurately assessed, since loss of coordination could be misattributed to cerebral damage. Observation of movement, stance, gait, and posture, as well as sensation, aids in diagnosis and thus a more sharply focused treatment of the injured person. The cranial nerves leave the brain at various levels of the forebrain and brainstem and exit the skull through complex pathways to cranial, cervical, thoracic, and abdominal locations. Direct trauma results from orbital or cerebral trauma, or a penetrating object that transgresses normal tissue planes and thereby disrupts the optic nerve’s anatomic and functional integrity. Symptoms associated with cranial nerve VI damage include diplopia, the inward deviation of the eye, and horizontal gaze paralysis towards the side of the lesion.
